Hungry Monkey is about the joys and challenges of sharing food with a baby and young child. Wow, that sounds sappy, doesn't it? Let's open it to page 99 and have a look:

"We can share one cupcake because they're big," said Laurie.

"Sure!" replied Iris. "I can have my frosting and you can have thebottom. Isn't that a good idea, Mama?"

I did my best to write something other than the typical books about kids and food, which tend to be about making homemade organic purees (boring), vegetables arranged into faces (scary), or allergies and other medical issues (really scary). This is a humor book for parents. It's about having food adventures with your kids. There are recipes and stories and lots of bad jokes.

Page 99 is typical, because it is mostly about cupcakes, and children are mostly about cupcakes. It falls in the middle of a chapter called "Sugar Makes Parents Hyper," which is about how five-year-old Iris and I enjoy sweets together and about how research has consistently shown that sugar doesn't make children hyper.

Yes, as I freely admit in the book, I'm as likely to convince parents of this as I am to convince them that getting hit on the head with an anvil doesn't cause concussions. Relax. Have a cupcake.